Poetry in Motion

I work with a lovely woman whom I shall call EY. She's a woman of grace, strength and intelligence... very kind and sensitive to the feelings of others. It's wonderful to work with her because she never makes me feel inadequate even though I sometimes truly am. People like that make me feel like giving my best at work and doing better each time.

When you interact with a woman like that, you develop an intuition that her children would have shining talent too, for mothers like her know exactly how to cultivate talent and build character. True enough, I discovered today that EY's daughter has a dance scholarship and intends to make a career of dance. But when I saw pictures of her dancing daughter, it wasn't so much the child that came to mind, but the qualities of the mother.

Poetry in motion. The most striking thing about a sylph-like dancer pirouetting in mid-air is beauty. Every movement is beautiful, conveying the grace and elegance of the womanly form. It is easy to mistake such gazelle like grace for softness. Yet, my logical mind tells me that flying through the air looking light as snow cannot be done without muscles of steel in every part of a young dancer's body.I sure wouldn't want to stand in the way of her pirouette for the force of it would throw me quite across the room.

So too is the exercise of kindness - the outward softness and grace belies the strength it takes a normal human being to be kind. A kind person needs to have the emotional steel to control the very human emotions such as anger and hurt, which lead us to strike back fast and hit out viciously. A kind person must surely possess the emotional steel to hold back the recoil of arrogance before it springs up and hurts another. A kind person would surely have the strength to put others before self. In summary, if you are kind then you must be strong too, no?

And then, let us reason further... what would happen if a kind person were to be so sorely tested that despite every great internal strength, righteous anger pours forth in a river of fury targeted at someone or something? Would that not be like getting hit on the side of the face by a dancer's leg coming out of a pirouette?

You know, for The Husband, that is so. Always kind and always selfless but on the rare occasions where he is angry, he strikes with neither fear nor favour. He does not lose because the strength that was channelled inwards to self-control bursts forth and overwhelms with no effort at all.